You can find lots of things to do with sweet potatoes and butternut squash. But if you’re looking for reliable and fairly easy, you can chunk and roast them. First, peel the potatoes or squash. (Butternut squash is one winter squash you can actually peel.) Then chop them into chunks or slices. The smaller your chunks, the faster they will cook. Then, toss the chunks in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Add chopped herbs if you have them. Bake at 350 degrees for half an hour or so. You can eat them when they are fork-tender, but consider waiting until they have carmelized some. Mmmm….

Summer is still hanging on by a thread!

Asian eggplant, sorrel, tomatoes, and garlic

I ate the sorrel plain. I know I’m crazy, but I really like it that way.

The tomatoes are amazing. They are as ripe as they can be! So red and flavorful!

The year of arugula continues…

yummy arugula!

And there’s even more apple goodness…

caramel apple cakes and eggs

I put the cakes in the freezer to save them for a Halloween treat for Chris and me. Maybe we’ll enjoy the evening with some cider or mulled wine. Or maybe some ale, as in “cakes and.”

Happily, we’ve still got enough spinach and romaine to see us through this week. The baby belle radishes are gone, but I’ve still got some turnips and another daikon.

Eggs!

We’ve made brownies and scrambled eggs so far. The scrambled eggs were so good! These are a real CSA treat. Fresh eggs turned scrambled eggs into a gourmet meal. I hope to be able to have another scrambled egg and salad meal soon. You know that the eggs are great when you don’t want to make any more brownies because you’d rather have more scrambled eggs! (more…)

The pre-season subscription is 3 deliveries every other week from mid-January till March. Because it’s supposed to last two weeks, there’s more stuff. Instead of a bag, we picked up two boxes today! I am very, very happy to have some produce to play with again.

We cooked our butternut squash in two stages: the neck and the bottom. First we cut off the neck, peeled it (butternut squash is pretty easy to peel), and sliced it into half-inch rounds. Then we drizzled them with butter and brown sugar and baked them for 30 minutes. It makes a relatively fast winter side dish. The rounds reheat great as leftovers, too. We wrapped the bottom in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

For the second stage, we cooked the bottom like acorn squash. We sliced it in half, scooped out the seeds, and put in some butter and maple syrup. Then we put the halves cut side up in a dish with half an inch of water and baked it for an hour. We really like butternut squash now.

Sweet potatoes!

We didn’t get to any sweet potatoes this week, but they are keeping just fine in their unwashed state. I’m cooking what’s left of my uglies today to make souffle to freeze. (That’s what’s keeping the butternut squash company in the picture above.) The ugly sweet potatoes still seemed fine, but I wanted to make sure I got to use them.(more…)

What a cool bag this week! It’s nice to be in a climate where the second week in December gives you such a nice array of produce to work with.

Standard items

3 apples

Napa cabbage

lettuce

kale

6 sweet potatoes

many carrots with tops

daikon radishes (These are in the picture below, but I think they belong here.)

Premium items

6 good-sized eggs (Looks like the chickens are growing up!)

parsley

cherry tomatoes in December!

garlic

daikon radishes

Online store items I bought because I couldn’t resist

pecans

peppermint goat’s milk soap

beeswax lip balm

This week’s plan

The eggs will be scrambled, eaten as French toast, used to make pound cake or to make chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm…. eggs. What can’t they do.

Don’t the carrots look great? They look completely different from store carrots, and they taste different, too. Who would have thought that carrots could be complex? I went looking for uses for carrot tops. The consensus is you can use them like parsley, but go easy because they are bitter.

The carrots, radishes, lettuce, and cherry tomatoes will all go into salads.

I’m thinking the carrots and radishes will also star in a stir-fry along with the garlic and Napa cabbage.

And I think we’ll make some sort of fresh tomato, parsley and garlic pasta dish. Plus loads of fresh parmesan. It will be like a summer’s day in December.

The kale looks great, too. Recently, I’ve been looking around for different ways to use greens, and I’ve learned enough about kale to know that this is the good stuff. I’ll toss some with pasta and use some in the kale and raisin recipe my mom’s been telling me about.

Sweet potatoes and apples will get the usual treatment. One apple is already gone. I’m still trying to work my way through my bag of ugly sweet potatoes. I may break down and make a soufflé or pie instead of just baking them individually.

I’m afraid the pecans were completely an impulse purchase. I have a sugared pecans recipe I might try. It’s kind of a mess to make, so I might not get to it till next week.

The peppermint soap smells so good. I consider it my first Christmas decoration. I’m going to look for a little Christmas dish and put it in our downstairs bathroom. The lip balm is actually for my hair. I hate the feeling of pretty much all hair products. Beeswax is the only thing I like. I just use a little because my hair is short, and now I have some in a handy to-go container.